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Back to Garry Tan Decides Who Gets to Build the Future, with Garry Tan.

Does Garry Tan Want More Billionaires?

Garry Tan wants more billionaires. In his view, saying billionaires should not exist is also saying society should ossify, an LLM should not exist, and Google should not exist.

He does not begrudge Google, even though some people on the hard left say Google should not exist. He wants more companies like Google. OpenAI was a spin-out of Y Combinator. Sam Altman sat in the same seat, saw the front row of young people with crazy ideas, and with Greg Brockman created YC Research that became OpenAI. Life now runs on an accelerated timeline, the age of intelligence is much closer, and he does not think that is a bad thing. AOC and a great many Americans believe all billionaires are ill-begotten. He disagrees: more billionaires, more choice, more prosperity, and more jobs.

A middle way does not have to be a big tech oligarchy, and it does not have to be mass asset seizure. He calls it a middle American way, and he will fight for it and hope for it.

Grokipedia·Garry Tan·Sam Altman

Transcript

Garry Tan Decides Who Gets to Build the Future ·

The Builders

More from this episode

  1. How Does Y Combinator Vet a Founder in 10 Minutes?Garry Tan says Y Combinator vets a founder in a 10-minute interview that ends in an up-or-down decision.
  2. Why Did Palantir Stay at the Mandarin Oriental?Garry Tan learned from Alex Karp that the hotel tells a buyer what Palantir is selling.
  3. Has True Free Market Enterprise Ever Been Tried?Garry Tan says true free market enterprise has never been tried.
  4. Why Does Garry Tan Say Little Tech Groups Are Astroturf?Garry Tan says groups that claim to speak for little tech are paid shills, funded with millions of dollars in astroturf money.
  5. How Big Is an AI Agent's Working Memory?Garry Tan says an AI agent's working memory can already hold about a thousand pages, roughly three Harry Potter books, and pull any page, fact, or event from…
  6. Should CEOs Avoid Cost Cutting?Garry Tan says the responsibility for CEOs and people who have a lot of privilege is not to cost cut.
  7. Why Does Garry Tan Fear a Future Run by Five AI Kings?Garry Tan fears a future in which a light cone of commercial value collapses into five AI kings.

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